Transferring Information
By: Trisha Howard
First, congratulate yourself on picking a community college over another four year school that you may not have been happy at. Not only will you be saving yourself money, but the transfer admissions policies of UC and CSU schools is to first draw from the available community college students.
When you are at community college, you may be tempted to prolong your stay -- after all, there are a lot of courses to choose from, your friends are there, and you can put off paying more money for your classes. RESIST THE URGE!!! Not only will you be taking more courses than you need, but this can inhibit your choice of classes when you transfer to a four year university. As many of you know, the state is in a budget crunch that will be affecting the UCs and CSUs. The effect is
that there are stringent unit caps being put in place. If you have too many transferable units coming from a community college, this may negatively affect your ability to complete a degree program at your transfer university.
When you first begin at the community college, one of the first things you need to do is define a list of goals for yourself. Do you think you will be applying to CSUs or UCs? Will it be a mix? This is important to know. Community colleges often use a numbering system to indicate which courses are UC and CSU transferable and which ones are just CSU transferable. If you think you may apply to a UC, you should take the courses that are UC transferable.
Before you have completed your first year at the community college, you should have some idea of the school (or at least the school system) you would like to transfer to. Community colleges in California have articulation agreements with four year colleges in the state. This will allow you to determine which classes will transfer to that university and under which requirement. The other important point about this is that it will allow you to figure out how to complete IGETC -- Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum, affectionately referred to as "I-Get-See". Completion of IGETC is a great deal for transfer students,
as receiving IGETC certification (by completing the requirements at your college) will mean that you have fulfilled all GEs for your UC or CSU.
For more information on articulation agreements and IGETC compatible courses, befriend the website www.assist.org. They have the information for all the community colleges and four year state colleges in California and are an invaluable resource.